Creating Peace

There are two words that must describe every decoration or piece of furniture in our house.  Functional or personal. My husband started this and I actually love it.  I used to have some knick-knacks here and there and some things just because I liked the way they looked, but they served no real purpose and did not mean anything to me.   I would say probably 90% of the things on our walls, on our shelves and in our rooms now are either functional or personal.

Personal.  This means they must be either pictures of our family (or pets), pictures that one of us photographed, and/or any artwork that one of us created ourselves. (i.e. painted plates, paintings, sculptures, etc.)

Functional.  This means it must be used for some purpose and on a regular basis.

On our walls are mostly pictures of our family, pictures one of us painted or drew, pictures we have taken of places we have been or pictures of interesting places in our city.  Besides a few prints (that we may think about giving away) we do have clocks and mirrors which are of course functional.  On our shelves are books, pictures of family, photo books, and that’s pretty much it.  Oh we do have some candles here and there, but those are functional because they create ambience and they make our house smell good.   As you can see in the picture below we have candles and then some artwork that our son made sitting on our mantle.   Above the mantle is a picture I painted of some koi fish in a pond.  We have a koi pond in our yard.  To the left of the mantle on the side wall are all pictures from trips we have taken.  We switch them out with new ones from time to time.

The picture above is our downstairs hallway area next to the stairs.  We have a shelf where we keep our cat’s food (so the dogs do not eat it), and above that shelf I have four black and white pictures of our pets (past and present) that I took last year.

Flipnotics is a coffee shop here in Austin.  It is a local place and my husband took this cool picture of their sign.  It matches the tile on a kitchen counter so we have it right on the counter next to our coffee machine.   

This concept really creates a simple decor.  It’s cleaner, neater, eclectic and much more personal.  It also keeps me from wanting to buy more things in the stores.  I look at items now and think…is that functional or personal?  The answer is usually no.

Take a look around your house and see how many of your belongings do not fit into these two categories.  Could you pair down?  You know me, I think lessening our amount of “stuff” is so important to a more peaceful life.  See if there is anything you do not use or love on your walls or shelves.  Remember, don’t feel bad if it’s something someone gave you (and you do not like it).  Give it away to someone who will like it.  You are not giving away the person or the relationship.  Just the stuff.  Those people do not want you to keep things that you do not like (and most of the time they probably won’t even remember what they’ve given you or that it’s missing)

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